Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Kdrama Review: City Hunter

Drama: City HunterGenre: Drama/Suspense/AdventureStarring: Lee Min Ho and Park Min Young (who also starred in Healer for those of you familiar!)Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤

In my quest to see everything Lee Min Ho has done, this one ended up next in the long line up of dramas to watch. And can I just say first off, it really isn't going to matter to me what the drama is... just watching him is pretty much heaven.

So that being said, here's the story of the drama: An incident happened in 1983 right about the time our hero boy was born. In this incident, a bunch of guys were doing this mission to North Korea.. which was successful... but on the way back home... their own guys (South Korea yes) killed them all. Except one. The one guy who survived has lived all these 28 years to seek out and destroy every single one of the five men who were involved in this fiasco and betrayal.

Our hero... Lee Yoon Sung (aka Lee Min Ho) was kidnapped by this one survivor when he was a baby and raised pretty much as the weapon he planned to use to accomplish this revenge. When Yoon Sung comes of age, he sets out to find and kill all these guys and do whatever his dad (because he calls this guy who raised him his father) wants him to do.

Along the way, things change and he realizes that his way of taking revenge differs completely from his dad's. And so he becomes this vigilante type dude, that everyone calls City Hunter, and he catches the guys so that they can suffer the justice, but he does not kill them.

But more importantly for him, he finds out what happened with his kidnapping as a baby..... he finds out the truth surrounding the whole mixed up business. And he is MAD.

An almost kiss.

Meanwhile, he falls in love of course, but he has decided he can't love anyone because of the mess his life is turning out to be. And of course the girl he loves is all mixed up in this mess too!

Sigh.

Here's the smile/laugh I'm talking about.

I loved this one for the fact that LMH has so many smiling scenes! In the other two dramas I've watched with him he is one serious dude... sheesh. And if he cracks a smile it a rare rare thing. And you must know that when LMH smiles, it is the best thing ever. BEST THING! And so to have him so smilely in this one, I was dying.

But then, when things start getting rough and sad and shall we say.. dramatic.. those smiles stop again. And then he made me crazy with his sob story.. the whole "I can't love you because I'm so terrible thing" MAKES ME CRAZY! And then, he was too sad to smile any more.

A very popular Lee Min Ho gif comes from this drama.

And another one. :)

So the first half of this drama was great. The second half sort of dragged for me and I was just wanting to get to the happy ending. And I must say, the ending was a massive let down. But I was glued. And I was weepy. And I was very very into it! But there was just something missing from the overall satisfaction, dang it!

Still... if you are a LMH fan like I am... you have to watch it despite that frustrating ending!

Oh, P.S. let me just also say... I could watch LMH doing fight scenes, like, all day. His grace for such things is amazing.

Here's a trailer:
(this one narrated by the dad who raised to be a revenge machine)

And of course some mushy scenes and some more fight scenes all set to the lovely songs from this drama:

7 comments:

If I watch this one, am I going to feel like I did when I read North & South? Like it took forever for the worst ending in the world? Or, even though the ending is a let down, is it still a good ending?

Hi I also recently watched and reviewed City Hunter and I would say that the ending definitely wasn't terrible it just also wasn't really satisfying because things with the main character after the time skip were left too open ended and it just didn't give the series the closure that you wanted it to have. Overall I thought that City Hunter was fantastic drama, my favorite so far so I personally think that the series is still worth a watch even though the ending could be better.

City Hunter is my favorite drama so I really love reading your thoughts about the series even though they're a bit less positive then mine which is probably because I pretty much live for this revenge, vigilante stories more than most people do and the show had the added bonus of reminding me of one of my favorite tv shows. The romance between Yoon sung and Nana also just hit all the right notes for me and let's just say that all stuff between those two in episode 8 just worked so perfectly for me. This shows premise and main couple just worked for me so well there's no way it couldn't be my favorite drama even though I do agree that it dragged a little for the last few episodes and the ending just didn't give me quite what I needed, it's my favorite drama I've watched but I don't think it's the best drama I watched in terms of writing.

I will say that I completely agree with you when you say that you could watch Lee Min Ho fight scenes all day because he did a great job with them and I loved the score that went with them and I still listen to that track from time to time. I'm also really looking forward to seeing your thoughts on The Heirs because I've heard a lot of mixed thoughts on the series, it seems that you either love it or hate it. I think reading your thoughts on the series would help me decide how far up on my to watch list the series is going to go because I do feel the need to watch another Lee Min Ho drama since he's currently tied for my second favorite Korean actor with someone else and I think seeing him another drama would help me decide which one I like more.

Lily: Thanks for you comment! I love reading your thoughts too! I can't wait to get to Heirs either. What other LMH have you watched? My favorite so far is still Faith, which is the first one I saw him in. And.. if he's your second favorite, I'm DYING to know who your first favorite is!! And who is he tied with? These are important questions??? :) I'm watching Kim Woo Bin right now in Uncontrollably Fond and wow, he is moving up my list... He's also in Heirs and watching both him and LMH in the same drama might kill me...

I'm glad to hear that you love reading my thoughts too and I'm a little sad that we only watched two of the same dramas so far so there's not a lot we can sure right now on the different dramas we watched. While The Heirs is on my to watch list I think it's going to take awhile for me to get to it because I'm watching four other dramas right now and I plan to watch both Healer and Flower Boy Next Door before I watch The Heirs, so while I'm looking forward to the series I wouldn't say I couldn't wait because I plan to wait quite awhile.

I've actually only seen Lee Min Ho in City Hunter which is one of the reasons that he is tied for my second favorite actor because I feel like I need to see him in another role in order to judge how good of an actor he truly is. While I've heard good things about Faith I'm not sure if I want to watch a full Sageuk drama.

My favorite actor would be Lee Jong Suk who played the male lead in I Hear Your Voice and Pinocchio which are my second and third favorite dramas. The reason that I would rank Lee Jong Suk higher than Lee Min Ho is because I felt that his performances were more emotional. The thing is I felt that both of Lee Jong Suk's characters were more open with their emotions which of course required him to have to show a lot more emotions with his acting whether those emotions would joy, rage, despair or desperation he did a good job at playing all those emotions and I've got to say that there were quite a few crying scenes in both dramas and he did a great job with all of them. Overall I was just more impressed by Lee Jong Suk's acting then I was by Lee Min Ho's.

The person that Lee Min Ho is tied for my second favorite is Jung Kyung Ho who starred in Falling for Innocence which is the first drama I ever watched and while the drama itself wasn't anything special I did think that Jung Kyung Ho did a great job with his role and I thought that he had especially good comedic timing. I also started watching Heartless City a few days ago which he also starred in and his acting in that one is very good, I'm not associating him at all with his role from Falling for Innocence which is something that doesn't happen often for me. As of right now I think that him and Lee Min Ho aren't going to be tied for long and that he's going to end up coming up on top because the two roles I've seen him in his acting was really good and they are two extremely different roles.

I haven't seen Kim Woo Bin in anything but I do know that he starred in School 2013 with Lee Jong Suk, so I find it a bit ironic that you mention him here.

Wow, what a ride. When an invisible barrier suddenly descends on this small town, how will the people handle things? Let's just say... not very well! Would it be giving away too much if I say... pretty much EVERYONE dies! And all written in...